Bardo Pond
Set and Setting (Matador)
by Jon Sarre
There’s something detachedly sexy in Bardo Ponds‘s slow, deliberate lazified-jam climb up a spiral staircase. Maybe it’s tied into the sultry somethingness of Isobel Sollenberger’s vox chords or the lush texturality of the feedback swirls’n’squawks or how the whole shebang of the band’s work here evokes EVOL-era Sonic Youth with more soul and less experimental pretension (yeah, that woulda made SY more appealing even at that point – ’85, ’86, whenever it was, at the apex of their interestingness).
It’s fitting then, that none of the tracks on this record really stands out in a “singles” sorta way from the greater weave of sound. Each one has a gradual build-up of flailing guitar noise until a crescendo of sorts is reached, after which starts the next selection. I’ve thrown it on as ambient background, but then hadta turn it off cuz I got drawn into it and couldn’t bring myself to do anything else. That’s a rare occurrence.
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